Saturday, 15 November 2014

Horseradish

Once it gets to this time of year it's time to dig up a few horseradish roots and prepare them for winter storage in the refrigerator. Here's the starting point:

and here's the end result:

In between you neet to scrub, trim and peel the roots and then blitz them in a blender or food processor. Tip the resulting granules into a jar, add a teaspoon of salt and then cover with vinegar. Keeps it the fridge for months.

When blitzing the root make sure you don't get overcome by the pungent fumes. They are guaranteed to produce tears. The essential oils are release through the grinding action (maceration). Don't be tempted to take a sniff. You have been warned!!!

Well Sue, if you don't like mustard or chili, you won't like horseradish. But if this not the case then you are missing out on a culinary fireworks display. You could hedge your bets and (carfully) grate some cleaned root straight into mashed potatoe. As the volatile oils are broken down in cooking the hot mash tones down the pungency of the horseradish but lifts the potato in the process. Do try it.

Hi Mark. Any horseradish sauce recipe I have seen has some vinegar in it, so not a problem. It's offset by the cream. Mind you, you could rinse it with water in a fine sieve if you felt strongly about it.